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Published: January 8th 2011
Our travels from India, to cross the boarder, wasn't as smooth as we wanted it to be! Our train to Gorakhpur should go at 00.35. We where there at 23.30 cause sometimes the trains come early! Just 5 min before the normal arriving time an anouncement came over the speakers!! "train blablabla to Gorakhpur is delayed by an hour" and after an hour it happened again! "train blablabla to Gorakhpur is now delayed by 2 hours" and yes one more time after half an hour "train blablabla to Gorakphur is now delayed by 2.5 hours"!!!
So at 3 o'clock we finally where on our way! And we can tell you its freezing cold on the trainstation.. Millions of people are just sleeping on the floors, waiting for their trains to arrive!
The next morning with another half an hour delay on top of the 2.5 hours we finally arrived in Gorakhpur. Already completly worn out we had to make it to the boarder of Nepal.. You can do this by bus or by a jeep. We went for the 2nd option! Yes, still in India, we where with 10 people cramped into the jeep, but it was fast. In an
hour and half we got dropped off 1 kilometer infront of the boarder in a town called Sunauli!
The boarder was easy peasy! It took us in total half an hour to get stamped out of India and into Nepal.. Just $200 lighter in our pockets!
Because of the delay in India we missed our connection to Pokhara by bus! Another choice to make.. Take the night bus (meaning wait for another 4 hours) or take a car straight to Pokhara.. You can guess it!! We took the car! It was an easy 6 hour drive from Sunauli to Pokhara with breathtaking views!
Pokhara Our first day we couldn't get used to the peace and quiet of Nepal, the friendlyness of the people.. But that changed really fast cause on the 3rd day me (ariska) got really really really sick!! Josh got the doctor to come by in the evening and he gave us some antibiotics to use for 5 days!! So no "merry Xmas" for us.. Just in bed with some movies!
But to top it off.. It didn't dissapear after 5 days.. And we had to make a trip to the private clinic in town!
Here
we where 2 days before New Years lying in the hospital on an iv drip! Not knowing when the hell we could get out!
On New Years Eve in the afternoon we had the "green" light to go "home" and that's what we did! A quick dinner in town between all the party people we where back in our guesthouse at 8 o'clock! And fast a sleep at 9 o'clock!! Happy New Year to all!!
Waking up fresh on New Years day (no hangovers 😊) we started to plan our next adventure. The Ghorepani to Ghandruk trek! Giving ourselves 2 days to get fit again we decided to go on monday the 3rd of January.
Just our luck we found out that on that Monday all transport decided to STRIKE!!!! No way we could get out of Pohkara to get to Naya Pul, the start of our trek!
Ghorepani to Ghandruk Finally on Tuesday the 4th of January we started our 6 days trek! All fresh and excited we arrived in Naya Pul (1070m) to get lost on our first kilometer of our trek.. Josh had to ask around where the hell the trek started!!! Yes we decided
to go without any help of a guide or porter.. Just a map would do!!
Found the trek we got to our first checkpoint where we got stamped in! Awesome feeling! At first the trek was easy going slowly up till we past the first two villages and arrived at Tikhedhungga. There we found out on our map that we had to take 3280 stone steps to get to Ulleri. Not just normal steps but scattered stones straight up and up and up!! Not so much fun!! But we arrived at an altitude of 2070m!
Our next goal was to find a lodge for the night! Of course we decided not to take the first one! This ment we ended up in the next town Banthanti at 2300m.. Yes shitloads of more steps and the first lodge we could find!
Day two we started around 9 o'clock in the morning.. easy going, cause this day was a short trek up to Ghorepani (2874m). It was an easy climb with some steps but not to much! We arrived around lunch time and checked ourselves in. Not knowing what to do the whole day we cut our trek short by climbing
up Poonhill (3210m) the same day already!
The views we got from there are undescribable! Without anybody around for the first hour we just chilled and took it all in! With sunset we decided to get back to Ghorepani where we took a nice hot shower and sat around the fire for the evening! Our lodge manager decided at 9 o'clock that it was bedtime and kicked us to our rooms! This night was freezing.. But what do you expect if our windows excited out of plastic and the wind came straight through!
Day three with an early start we headed to Tadapani! A short climb to 3180m over the Deurali Pass to Ban Thanti to go downwards to Tadapani (2590m).. This was through a valley full of waterfalls and snow! Here it was that Josh went flat on his arse!! Hahaha... slippery it was! After smashing it to Tadapani around 1 o'clock we decided to continue to Ghandruk, instead of staying here for the night! They said it was only 3 hours more if we kept going!
The first sign we walked into was a sign with all the animals around... Bears, Leopards, Birds, etc... And the second
sign we walked into said "Do not go alone"!! But of course this didn't stop us! The only thing we saw where different kinds of monkeys...no bears, no leopards, but that's alright!
In the end we really got tired.. Maybe it was a bit to much for one day, but we made it to Ghandruk at night fall! This ment a celebration with a beer and watch the sunset over the Annapurna range!
Cutting out our stay in Tadapani this ment it was our last day already to get back to Naya Pul. Ghandruk at 2020m altitude was a steep descent to Syauli Bajar (1160m). And again only rock stairs down! Crazy to see all the donkeys and other animals going up! We had to push ourselves against the wall not to be kicked of the mountain!
In the end we couldn't walk proper cause our mussles where trembling of going down! And knowing we where only a few kilometers away from the end it was tough! Without knowing we walked around the corner and saw the last village of Birethani (1050m) where we had to go to the checkpoint to check us out!
Arriving early we had a
quick lunch in Birethani, soaked up the last views of the Annapurna range, and went back to Naya Pul where our taxi was waiting!
Next destination Kathmandu!!
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chloe
non-member comment
awesome!!!!!!!!!